many more examples of such supply chain collaboration where leaders are stepping
up and actively sharing their food safety responsibility.

Help Your Senior Leaders Take Responsibility

In a paper published last year in Food Control, 12 we discovered a significant dif-ference in leaders and supervisors when evaluating their organization’s food safetymaturity. A significant difference was found between professionals in manufacturingfunctions (e.g., production, sanitation and maintenance) and professionals in foodsafety. Food safety professionals evaluated the maturity significantly higher thanmanufacturing professionals did. A similar difference was also found between seniorto improve understanding and perfor-mance in the food safety culture do-main. Lots of events are held every yearwhere practitioners and scientists sharenew knowledge of food safety acrossthe supply chain and openly tell theirstories of what worked well and what wewould not do again. We are fortunatethat those before us have paved the pathfor assuming that food safety is a noncom-petitive advantage through solving prob-lems such as controlling Listeria. I amproud to be associated with two groupsthat have embraced this principle spe-cific to food safety culture: the GFSIFood Safety Culture Technical WorkingGroup and the research-oriented ScienceGroup (see “Groups Involved in FoodSafety Culture,” p. 48).

The two groups meet in person
twice annually and have scheduled
these meetings to advance each other’s
work. As such, the guidance document
being developed in the GFSI group
is reviewed and discussed by the Science Group to provide input to the
GFSI group’s next in-person meeting.
This leapfrog principle accomplishes
two things: Each group provides and
receives input to and from the other
to ensure scientifically based, practical
results. It also allows each group to go
deeper in their respective areas of expertise: the global food supply chain and
social science research.

Our global industry is filled with
examples like these; for example, Food
Standards Agency Australia and New
Zealand is leading continuous improvements in food safety culture with both
the industry and regulators in their
region. Maple Leaf Foods partnered
with the Ontario Food Protection
Association in driving the Canadian
food industry to adopt higher standards through its annual symposium,
dedicated to “Maturity, are you on the
upraise or downslide?” In addition, the
International Union of Food Science
and Technology is defining a curriculum
for food safety culture; GFSI is hosting
its annual meeting in Houston this year;
and a long list of food company CEOs
will be sharing their thoughts on the
future and food safety. There are many,